3 ms·

It's a good question to ask. Many here probably aren't old enough to remember the cautionary tale of CDDB/Gracenote [1]. Back when Compact Discs were still a t

by cletus 5y ago

It's a good question to ask. Many here probably aren't old enough to remember the cautionary tale of CDDB/Gracenote [1]. Back when Compact Discs were still a thing. on Winamp, WMP, etc you wanted to display a list of tracks, covert art, the artist, etc. Volunteers contributed this data from their own discs (that could be identified). This was before MP3s and ID3 tagging. So volunteers built the CDDB with this data. The entity that "owned" it silently put in a copyright assignment with any submissions and ultimately became a company called Gracenote, which still exists today. They also removed the free access to CDDB. None of this matters today but at the time it was a huge loss and a betrayal. So I personally think it's completely fine to contribute to something like OSM as long as there are guarantees in there that the open access to that data can't be lost. It doesn't bother me if the likes of Apple and Microsoft use that for commercial uses, particularly if in doing so they contribute data back to the project. This is why Stackoverflow dumps [2] were done in the first place and why they're so important: as a guarantee against that data being taken away or put behind a paywall. Beware the CDDBs of the world however. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDDB [2]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/224873/all-stack-exchange-data-dumps/224922#224922 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/224873/all-stack-ex...

matkoniecz 5y ago
> as long as there are guarantees in there that the open access to that data can't be lost. 1) current dataset can be fully downloaded and is available under a copyleft license https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm 2) it would be relatively hard to hijack project https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Contributor_Terms https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Contributor_Term... OSMF agrees that it may only use or sub-license Your Contents as part of a database and only under the terms of one or more of the following licences: ODbL 1.0 for the database and DbCL 1.0 for the individual contents of the database; CC-BY-SA 2.0; or such other free and open licence (for example, http://www.opendefinition.org/okd/ http://www.opendefinition.org/okd/) as may from time to time be chosen by a vote of the OSMF membership and approved by at least a 2/3 majority vote of active contributors.
danShumway 5y ago
> as long as there are guarantees in there that the open access to that data can't be lost This is the key point. The problem isn't mutual benefit, the problem is when communities can be seized by private entities or have the rug pulled out from under them, effectively stealing a community and shutting it down for their own gain. That's the difference between OSM and GoodReads. If you're going to donate time, make sure you donate time to commons, not to companies. That being said, OSM does have a lot of guarantees about its data in place, and even better has license requirements that force companies who extend that data to contribute back. It's good that OSM is seeing more usage across the industry.
johannes1234321 5y ago
In a way it is how Google operates: One can send in details about shops and corrections for the maps, but Google is the sole owner of the resulting map. With OSM however I have the same rights to the combined data as any other entity.

by cletus 5y ago

matkoniecz 5y ago

> as long as there are guarantees in there that the open access to that data can't be lost. 1) current dataset can be fully downloaded and is available under a copyleft license https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm 2) it would be relatively hard to hijack project https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Contributor_Terms https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Contributor_Term... OSMF agrees that it may only use or sub-license Your Contents as part of a database and only under the terms of one or more of the following licences: ODbL 1.0 for the database and DbCL 1.0 for the individual contents of the database; CC-BY-SA 2.0; or such other free and open licence (for example, http://www.opendefinition.org/okd/ http://www.opendefinition.org/okd/) as may from time to time be chosen by a vote of the OSMF membership and approved by at least a 2/3 majority vote of active contributors.

danShumway 5y ago

> as long as there are guarantees in there that the open access to that data can't be lost This is the key point. The problem isn't mutual benefit, the problem is when communities can be seized by private entities or have the rug pulled out from under them, effectively stealing a community and shutting it down for their own gain. That's the difference between OSM and GoodReads. If you're going to donate time, make sure you donate time to commons, not to companies. That being said, OSM does have a lot of guarantees about its data in place, and even better has license requirements that force companies who extend that data to contribute back. It's good that OSM is seeing more usage across the industry.

johannes1234321 5y ago

In a way it is how Google operates: One can send in details about shops and corrections for the maps, but Google is the sole owner of the resulting map. With OSM however I have the same rights to the combined data as any other entity.